That works well for supermarket queues, not so much for pollution of the environment. Or perhaps you can argue that it will work out, in the end, but that's going to be far too late.
Where does the environment fit in? All that burned gas produces a lot of CO2. CO2 is bad, but not immediately so. Your free market won't save you or your kids from cancer.
In a perfect world, the free market is a pretty good idea. In a world where most of the inhabitants are irresponsible, arrogant and self-centered assholes, it just doesn't work that well.
> Yes because we all know the only real innovation isn't done in multi-million dollar research centers, it's done in dad's garage, duh!
Again with this argument, this time in disguise. MS does a lot of cool research and they hire loads of interesting and smart people. None of this is actually ever sold as a product. The closest they are is with the touch screen, which is nice, but when it'll finally come out it won't be very cool or innovative, it'll merely be "neat." At least on that they dropped the ball with regards to time to market.
My point: if MS has all this R&D and all these millions to fund it, why is Vista all they have to show for it?
The answer: read the blog about the guy in the Vista shutdown menu development team.
And that is the point the OP was trying to make. At least MS has become inept with size and age.
(P.S. if you're trying to have a decent argument, make sure to refrain from patronizing remarks like your last one.)
In my country (the Netherlands) you cannot sue someone over something that is a crime in itself.
Joe wants to kill John and hires Jack to do it. He pays Jack a million â. Then, Jack does not kill John. This is fraud (or something like that, breach of contract, you name it) and would be punishable if the main act were legal. Killing a person is not legal, thus, Joe does not have a case.
The point with the WGA is that corporate customers, the ones who have volume licenses and paid-for servers and are MS Certified Gold shops, are getting hit as well. Sometimes there's a validation server outage, or you change a network card or something like that, and Windows will stop working or, worse, will still work but stop receiving updates.
There's a fine line between tightening up security and making people pay for your software the hard way, and pissing people off in such a bad way that they might look for an alternative.
Your point is valid, and I think MS has gained paying customers for it. They've also lost a couple, and are making people aware of the DRM/WGA issue. In the end, if they sell more than they lose, the WGA stays. I think it's jarring that a piece of software, installed on my computer, is actively working against me, mistrusting me, waiting for the moment it can cut me off. It even updates itself all the time.
What's amazing is that even in the light of the original and wrong quote "Copyrights weren't established to encourage the release of work, they were established to give the people who do the work of creating them have some redress when someone else rips them off," the copyright extends after the author's death.
Here we go: the author of the work is dead. There will never be another Jimi Hendrix song or Tolkien book or Kubrick movie. Still, their works are copyrighted. For what?
Infringing on these will not make Jimi record another album. Copying The Shining won't make baby Stanley cry. The original authors do not need "redress" when someone "rips them off", because they are dead.
Further, they do not need any more (earthly) compensation, because they do not benefit society anymore. Regrettably! But paying for Tolkien books, out of some kind of twisted feeling for nostalgia or entitlement, does not make him write LOTR4.
Who gets all this cash? The "estate" or the kids. Let's generalise a bit and say that 20 people benefit from this, per dead artist. This is probably on the generous side. How many people would benefit from stuff going into the public domain after the author's death? I'd say: easily over 20. I'd go as far as saying: the entire society would benefit.
The rules for having 20 people benefit from a dead parent's work are created by the government. This means we can change these rules and have all of society benefit.
Side note: my dad's an architect. He designed and built a couple of buildings. I consider this a creative effort. Do I get to have royalties for a minimum of seventy years after his death? Does he even get to have royalties?
Side note 2: as long as we're doing the free market thing in this thread, why don't we really apply it here. If it is no longer profitable for an artist to make music in the current environment, he should stop doing that and get a job like the rest of us.
> Why don't you go to graduate school? Or develop an innovation?
Because someone has to mow the lawns of the rich. Someone has to paint their fences, pick up their trash, sell them services, assemble household appliances, etc. The economy is not about the rich against the losers who should have gotten an education.
Your point is so completely besides reality that it hurts.
It's been said that people aren't buying music as much because there's too much competition out. DVDs with your favourite tv series and movies, also in blue ray, then there's games for a variety of consoles, other digital content online, for example the monthly WoW fee.
This is why less of the kid's dollars go to music.
> Yes, they can earn a great deal of money playing live shows, but do you honestly realize how hard it is on a person to tour?
You know, when I have a job and it sucks, I look around for something else. I might even go into a different line of work altogether! I'm flexible like that.
Ownership, at least in our neck of the woods, implies something tangible to own. You can own a car, or a book, or even a dog. "Music" or "a song" cannot be owned as such.
However, it's copyrightable, trademarkable, etc, and all with good reason.
As for your assertion that you own the media (correct) AND the content on that media, this is for the courts to decide.
Let's not confuse copyright holder with owner here.
> A "500 GB" hard drive still means 500,000,000,000 bytes.
Yes, but that's not because of any standards or morals or beliefs. That's because a 500,000,000,000 bytes drive is cheaper than a 500G(i)B drive and can still legally be named 500 GB.
That, and the fact that a real standard shouldn't have to be improved upon after its codification. Sure, improvements will arise, and can be submitted through the proper channels.
It's a standard. It should be done before it gets ISO'd. Not the other way around, and especially not as the main reason: "Let's certify this SO it can be improved."
Don't you know what those O's stand for? Open Open XML! See? Double open! It must be very open! Way more open than ODF, which only has one O (and what's a DF anyway?)
Software patents cover an idea, not a piece of code. Here's an idea: "write information to a digital medium over a network." See how broad this is? If you code something that does what my patent describes, you'll have to license with me. The idea itself is out there anyhow, because it's part of the problem your product is solving. The customer knows the problem and can see your idea and thus your product solving it, so that's not secret in any meaningful way.
Now for the implementation. How exactly is it solved? This should be part of the patent, but often it's not or in such broad terms that anything falls under it. The actual code is copyrighted. You cannot use or distribute code or the applications built with it if you're not licensed by the creator.
Without software patents, you can make different code that solves that same problem in a different (better?) way. The code is protected and can be licensed either way.
Another example is Amazon's infamous single click to buy shopping cart. Besides the blatant obviousness of this idea, there's another problem: if this patent holds, no-one can create a shopping cart that has one click buying, without licensing with Amazon. So, my small time basement startup cannot have a decent online shop without paying up. This does stifle innovation.
Idea: "compress files to a smaller size using compression algorithms." Let's say the Zip people hold this one (I know there aren't any "zip people" but let's assume for the sake of argument.) Would there be Rar? Would there be bz? Or 7z? Or arj? Or mp3?
In short, we don't need software patents to cover code because it's already protected by copyright, and you can make people pay for using it. We don't want it for software ideas either, because that stifles innovation, keeping me from implementing something in a better way.
In a multicultural society like the Netherlands, where 1 out of 16 is muslim, there is no place for people spouting such nonsense. There is no need or want for his bland populist statements. It's just unnecessary.
I'm all for openness. I'm for freedom of speech, democracy and peace. What did you think? The multicultural part of this society cannot be reached in a democratic way by infighting and hardlining. If Wilders wants to represent the people who elected him, why doesn't he do that? Are these people served by him creating problems where no problems need to be? By alienating muslims in the Netherlands? Muslims are part of the Netherlands. There is no changing it. What would the next Wilders want, abolish tulips? Fatwah on Friesland? We need people who can represent the Netherlands as a whole, not as a sum of its parts. Wilders is not that person.
How does making the Fitna movie represent the people who elected him? Does it make all their troubles go away? Does it help integrate muslim groups in our society? Does it create a better healthcare system? Solve problems with our education? As said, the man is one-issue. Yes, he got this far on that issue and it needs to be addressed. Making a movie is not the way.
The movie will most likely be seen as hateful. I can't say I blame the offended muslim groups much. In a world where it's necessary for people to communicate, he's closing up. In a world where people need to work together if they want to reach anything, he's being xenophobic.
I would suggest that in your reply, you refrain from offending me personally. This is the exact thing Wilders does; create issues when they just aren't there. It's also a very cheap way of arguing your point.
There's a slight chance the film will not be inflammatory and hateful (quit the ad hominem sic please, we're all Dutch here.) There is very little chance that certain religious groups will not be offended at all.
I think the GP deftly avoided the blanket statement you fell for: "certain groups." Just like with Theo van Gogh (for the rest of the world: a cinematographer who made a short film about women's rights under the Koran and was killed by a crazy Muslim) there will be crazy folks with an axe to grind.
About the validity of Wilders' points, I'm sure we can find good sides to every person. I also think that the Netherlands as a nation is worse off with this clown in our parliament. The man is one-issue (rest of the world: the issue being "there are too many foreigners in the Netherlands.") He's trying to instill fear in the Dutch people, fear of the Islam and of foreigners in general. There's a word for it: xenophobia. In a multi cultural society like ours, xenophobia is a bad thing.
In this Saturday's Volkskrant, there was a large piece about all kinds of Islamic groups in the Netherlands, like the LBM (Landelijk Beraad Marokkanen / National Morocan Society) actually and actively defending the Dutch government and society by sending messages to Islamic "hot zones" explaining our stance in the matter, telling them how well integrated they are, how many mosques there are in the Netherlands, etc. The piece is titled "We're not Denmark," an unfortunate title for a text that communicates openness, referring to the Mohammed cartoons.)
Of note is the anti-movement on Youtube: people posting short films saying sorry, titled "Fitna by Geert Wilders", in the hope that a search for the film will yield only apologies.
As a white Dutch guy, I'm proud of our multi cultural roots, and our multi cultural society. If Wilders wants to make "valid points" he is free to do so but not as part of our parliament. I think it's very unfortunate that he's getting so much attention, especially from abroad. People tend to think that he represents all of Holland, which is very far from the truth. This is not good advertisement for our nation.
Slashdot Mirror
That works well for supermarket queues, not so much for pollution of the environment. Or perhaps you can argue that it will work out, in the end, but that's going to be far too late.
Where does the environment fit in? All that burned gas produces a lot of CO2. CO2 is bad, but not immediately so. Your free market won't save you or your kids from cancer.
In a perfect world, the free market is a pretty good idea. In a world where most of the inhabitants are irresponsible, arrogant and self-centered assholes, it just doesn't work that well.
> Yes because we all know the only real innovation isn't done in multi-million dollar research centers, it's done in dad's garage, duh!
Again with this argument, this time in disguise. MS does a lot of cool research and they hire loads of interesting and smart people. None of this is actually ever sold as a product. The closest they are is with the touch screen, which is nice, but when it'll finally come out it won't be very cool or innovative, it'll merely be "neat." At least on that they dropped the ball with regards to time to market.
My point: if MS has all this R&D and all these millions to fund it, why is Vista all they have to show for it?
The answer: read the blog about the guy in the Vista shutdown menu development team.
And that is the point the OP was trying to make. At least MS has become inept with size and age.
(P.S. if you're trying to have a decent argument, make sure to refrain from patronizing remarks like your last one.)
Well, that's weird.
In my country (the Netherlands) you cannot sue someone over something that is a crime in itself.
Joe wants to kill John and hires Jack to do it. He pays Jack a million â. Then, Jack does not kill John. This is fraud (or something like that, breach of contract, you name it) and would be punishable if the main act were legal. Killing a person is not legal, thus, Joe does not have a case.
The point with the WGA is that corporate customers, the ones who have volume licenses and paid-for servers and are MS Certified Gold shops, are getting hit as well. Sometimes there's a validation server outage, or you change a network card or something like that, and Windows will stop working or, worse, will still work but stop receiving updates.
There's a fine line between tightening up security and making people pay for your software the hard way, and pissing people off in such a bad way that they might look for an alternative.
Your point is valid, and I think MS has gained paying customers for it. They've also lost a couple, and are making people aware of the DRM/WGA issue. In the end, if they sell more than they lose, the WGA stays. I think it's jarring that a piece of software, installed on my computer, is actively working against me, mistrusting me, waiting for the moment it can cut me off. It even updates itself all the time.
Instead, couldn't they have built a better ?
What's amazing is that even in the light of the original and wrong quote "Copyrights weren't established to encourage the release of work, they were established to give the people who do the work of creating them have some redress when someone else rips them off," the copyright extends after the author's death.
Here we go: the author of the work is dead. There will never be another Jimi Hendrix song or Tolkien book or Kubrick movie. Still, their works are copyrighted. For what?
Infringing on these will not make Jimi record another album. Copying The Shining won't make baby Stanley cry. The original authors do not need "redress" when someone "rips them off", because they are dead.
Further, they do not need any more (earthly) compensation, because they do not benefit society anymore. Regrettably! But paying for Tolkien books, out of some kind of twisted feeling for nostalgia or entitlement, does not make him write LOTR4.
Who gets all this cash? The "estate" or the kids. Let's generalise a bit and say that 20 people benefit from this, per dead artist. This is probably on the generous side. How many people would benefit from stuff going into the public domain after the author's death? I'd say: easily over 20. I'd go as far as saying: the entire society would benefit.
The rules for having 20 people benefit from a dead parent's work are created by the government. This means we can change these rules and have all of society benefit.
Side note: my dad's an architect. He designed and built a couple of buildings. I consider this a creative effort. Do I get to have royalties for a minimum of seventy years after his death? Does he even get to have royalties?
Side note 2: as long as we're doing the free market thing in this thread, why don't we really apply it here. If it is no longer profitable for an artist to make music in the current environment, he should stop doing that and get a job like the rest of us.
Each time I read that they're ditching safe_mode, I do a little happy dance and shed a tear of delight.
All the other stuff is great as well, but safemode has made the quality of my life significantly worse in the past.
> Why don't you go to graduate school? Or develop an innovation?
Because someone has to mow the lawns of the rich. Someone has to paint their fences, pick up their trash, sell them services, assemble household appliances, etc. The economy is not about the rich against the losers who should have gotten an education.
Your point is so completely besides reality that it hurts.
It's been said that people aren't buying music as much because there's too much competition out. DVDs with your favourite tv series and movies, also in blue ray, then there's games for a variety of consoles, other digital content online, for example the monthly WoW fee.
This is why less of the kid's dollars go to music.
Now that's a great idea... Where have I heard that before?
aspirin.
You sound like an episode of 24.
> Yes, they can earn a great deal of money playing live shows, but do you honestly realize how hard it is on a person to tour?
You know, when I have a job and it sucks, I look around for something else. I might even go into a different line of work altogether! I'm flexible like that.
Ownership, at least in our neck of the woods, implies something tangible to own. You can own a car, or a book, or even a dog. "Music" or "a song" cannot be owned as such.
However, it's copyrightable, trademarkable, etc, and all with good reason.
As for your assertion that you own the media (correct) AND the content on that media, this is for the courts to decide.
Let's not confuse copyright holder with owner here.
> A "500 GB" hard drive still means 500,000,000,000 bytes.
Yes, but that's not because of any standards or morals or beliefs. That's because a 500,000,000,000 bytes drive is cheaper than a 500G(i)B drive and can still legally be named 500 GB.
Shady business practices aren't a good argument.
Other than that, carry on.
Sure. But even while you're technically correct, your business partners will think you're the leak anyway. They will shun you.
And as for your answer to 2), have you ever tried suing a foreign police department? Good luck with that.
That, and the fact that a real standard shouldn't have to be improved upon after its codification. Sure, improvements will arise, and can be submitted through the proper channels.
It's a standard. It should be done before it gets ISO'd. Not the other way around, and especially not as the main reason: "Let's certify this SO it can be improved."
Oh, I thought the real question was: did the allegedly homeless man share any files illegally? Allegedly?
Don't you know what those O's stand for? Open Open XML! See? Double open! It must be very open! Way more open than ODF, which only has one O (and what's a DF anyway?)
OSX?
Check out the bottom right hand picture on this page:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9070218&pageNumber=3
Note the distinct boobie shaped "keyboard."
NOW say tactile is out.
That's not what software patents do.
Software patents cover an idea, not a piece of code. Here's an idea: "write information to a digital medium over a network." See how broad this is? If you code something that does what my patent describes, you'll have to license with me. The idea itself is out there anyhow, because it's part of the problem your product is solving. The customer knows the problem and can see your idea and thus your product solving it, so that's not secret in any meaningful way.
Now for the implementation. How exactly is it solved? This should be part of the patent, but often it's not or in such broad terms that anything falls under it. The actual code is copyrighted. You cannot use or distribute code or the applications built with it if you're not licensed by the creator.
Without software patents, you can make different code that solves that same problem in a different (better?) way. The code is protected and can be licensed either way.
Another example is Amazon's infamous single click to buy shopping cart. Besides the blatant obviousness of this idea, there's another problem: if this patent holds, no-one can create a shopping cart that has one click buying, without licensing with Amazon. So, my small time basement startup cannot have a decent online shop without paying up. This does stifle innovation.
Idea: "compress files to a smaller size using compression algorithms." Let's say the Zip people hold this one (I know there aren't any "zip people" but let's assume for the sake of argument.) Would there be Rar? Would there be bz? Or 7z? Or arj? Or mp3?
In short, we don't need software patents to cover code because it's already protected by copyright, and you can make people pay for using it. We don't want it for software ideas either, because that stifles innovation, keeping me from implementing something in a better way.
Wow, you're reading things into my post that just aren't there... Talk about tunnel vision!
Here's my result of hateful things he says after a very very short search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders#Position_on_Islam
In a multicultural society like the Netherlands, where 1 out of 16 is muslim, there is no place for people spouting such nonsense. There is no need or want for his bland populist statements. It's just unnecessary.
I'm all for openness. I'm for freedom of speech, democracy and peace. What did you think? The multicultural part of this society cannot be reached in a democratic way by infighting and hardlining. If Wilders wants to represent the people who elected him, why doesn't he do that? Are these people served by him creating problems where no problems need to be? By alienating muslims in the Netherlands? Muslims are part of the Netherlands. There is no changing it. What would the next Wilders want, abolish tulips? Fatwah on Friesland? We need people who can represent the Netherlands as a whole, not as a sum of its parts. Wilders is not that person.
How does making the Fitna movie represent the people who elected him? Does it make all their troubles go away? Does it help integrate muslim groups in our society? Does it create a better healthcare system? Solve problems with our education? As said, the man is one-issue. Yes, he got this far on that issue and it needs to be addressed. Making a movie is not the way.
The movie will most likely be seen as hateful. I can't say I blame the offended muslim groups much. In a world where it's necessary for people to communicate, he's closing up. In a world where people need to work together if they want to reach anything, he's being xenophobic.
I would suggest that in your reply, you refrain from offending me personally. This is the exact thing Wilders does; create issues when they just aren't there. It's also a very cheap way of arguing your point.
There's a slight chance the film will not be inflammatory and hateful (quit the ad hominem sic please, we're all Dutch here.) There is very little chance that certain religious groups will not be offended at all.
I think the GP deftly avoided the blanket statement you fell for: "certain groups." Just like with Theo van Gogh (for the rest of the world: a cinematographer who made a short film about women's rights under the Koran and was killed by a crazy Muslim) there will be crazy folks with an axe to grind.
About the validity of Wilders' points, I'm sure we can find good sides to every person. I also think that the Netherlands as a nation is worse off with this clown in our parliament. The man is one-issue (rest of the world: the issue being "there are too many foreigners in the Netherlands.") He's trying to instill fear in the Dutch people, fear of the Islam and of foreigners in general. There's a word for it: xenophobia. In a multi cultural society like ours, xenophobia is a bad thing.
In this Saturday's Volkskrant, there was a large piece about all kinds of Islamic groups in the Netherlands, like the LBM (Landelijk Beraad Marokkanen / National Morocan Society) actually and actively defending the Dutch government and society by sending messages to Islamic "hot zones" explaining our stance in the matter, telling them how well integrated they are, how many mosques there are in the Netherlands, etc. The piece is titled "We're not Denmark," an unfortunate title for a text that communicates openness, referring to the Mohammed cartoons.)
Of note is the anti-movement on Youtube: people posting short films saying sorry, titled "Fitna by Geert Wilders", in the hope that a search for the film will yield only apologies.
As a white Dutch guy, I'm proud of our multi cultural roots, and our multi cultural society. If Wilders wants to make "valid points" he is free to do so but not as part of our parliament. I think it's very unfortunate that he's getting so much attention, especially from abroad. People tend to think that he represents all of Holland, which is very far from the truth. This is not good advertisement for our nation.
> (2) the non-legit side: making copies of movies for your friends
Your friends must love you.